Getting started

Artifact Forge is a deterministic-first generator of 3D-printable functional parts. The source of truth is a typed YAML product grammar — a catalog of archetypes plus your product instance. You normally work in the Product Cockpit, a local web UI; an LLM is only ever a translator of intent into YAML, and everything works without one.

Install

git clone <repository>
cd artifact-forge
uv sync --extra cad --extra web

No API keys are required. An ANTHROPIC_API_KEY optionally enables the natural-language intent translator in the Cockpit — without it the UI honestly shows LLM OFF and uses deterministic bilingual intent matching instead.

Open the Cockpit

uv run forge ui

The top bar shows three capability badges — CAD ON/OFF (is the CAD kernel installed), LLM ON/OFF, STRICT default — and the Home screen offers the entry points:

• Create from prompt — describe the part in plain language; the wizard detects the archetype and walks you to a validated form.
• Create from YAML — paste an existing product or assembly declaration.
• Browse archetype catalog — archetype cards and ready-made examples you can open in the workspace.

Your first part, in five stages

Pick Create from prompt and type something like “under-desk cable clip for a 20mm bundle, side entry, two M4 screws”. The wizard takes you through five stages — each one a gate, not a formality:

1. Intent — candidate archetypes with confidence; pick one.
2. Contract — what this product family guarantees and refuses; accept it.
3. Capability — honesty before geometry: unsupported features block the path in strict mode.
4. Parameters — every parameter live-validated on each input, CAD-free.
5. Validate Form — the exact section profile, measured; then ⚒ Forge (build STL).

The full walkthrough: From prompt to product.

Inspect and edit

The build opens in the Workspace: a part tree, five lenses over the same pipeline truth (3D, Section, Honesty, Manufacturing, Region/Edit), and a findings console. To change the part you don’t push vertices — you select a region and propose a patch, previewed CAD-free before anything rebuilds. See The Cockpit and Semantic editing.

What the build writes

Every build lands in out/<product-id>/: part.stl and part.step with the print orientation baked in, findings.yaml (every check with measured evidence, grade A–F) and honesty_report.yaml (requested vs supported vs proven-built features). Formats: Report formats.

Prefer a terminal?

Everything the Cockpit does, the CLI does too — forge validate, build, edit, compat. See the CLI reference.